I recently watched a CNN Special documentary by Chief International Correspondent Christian Amanpour, Scream Blood Murder. The documentary highlighted various genocides that occurred in the 20th century. It also gave Christian Amanpour a forum to lavish praise on various “heroes” within those genocidal contexts, who “screamed bloody murder” and yet their calls went unheeded by the global humanitarian community.

Unfortunately for me, or maybe for her, Amanpour has very little credibility in my eyes as far as her reporting. Therefore, I took everything she said with a grain of salt. My cynicism of her credibility was reaffirmed when she finally reached the section of Rwanda and the Rwandan genocide, and failed to include an ounce of truth in her reporting. To her credit, she did stress that many people died and some in some very cruel ways, while making sure to exploite the genocidal images of dead bodies floating in bodies of water, disconnected limbs, and skulls and bones to make her point.

If you did not know that people died during these genocides, now you know. But don’t take her word for it, WATCH IT. Over, and over, and over again. Hopefully by watching it so much, her purpose will be served. You see, by constantly being exposed to these images, as anyone who watched the documentary was, people will probably be desensitized to these images and might no longer care whether they see floating bodies. The shock value will have diminished, and it will seem like just another day in indigenous people’s lives around the world where the living and the dead coexist, constantly reminded of past traumas and atrocities, unable to heal and move forward. But the point WAS to move forward and past the traumas right Amanpour or were you just “reporting”?

The undertone of her reporting? Indigenous, non European people’s (well except Bosnia) around the world are savages, and through their savagery committed terrible crimes with and against each other, and it took a various western straight white males to notice and call out the horrors. I mean I don’t have to tell you but, EVERYONE knows how straight white males are the paragon of moral and ethical standards and practices. (note the sarcasm)

In each of her profiles except the last one for Darfur, a straight white male was the focus of honorable action, and courageous fight on behalf of indigenous people (a white French priest for Cambodians, a white American for Iraqis, another white American for Bosnians, and a white Canadian soldier for Rwandans) . Each of the people highlighted gave themselves to their causes, taking great risks, and questioning various super powers and demanding action, and often failing. For Rwanda, the featured heroic westerner was Romeo Dallaire, write of the fictitious book Shake Hands With the Devil.

Amanpour starts off the piece on Rwanda by claiming that Dallaire was brought in “to monitor peace agreements between Hutus and Tutsis” thereby creating the falsified framework in which viewers are supposed to understand Dallaire’s role and “why he did what he did.” Amanpour fails to report that the peace agreements were not between Hutus and Tutsis and neither was the conflict that evolved and eventually culminated into the Rwandan genocide. Instead, she simplifies what happened as is typical when reporting on African politics, and fails to inform viewers that the conflict Dallaire was monitoring started when Rwanda was attacked and invaded by a rebel group from neighboring Uganda. She also fails to tell viewers that these rebels terrorized Rwandans for three years, before the arrival of our heroic Dallaire. Was nobody screaming “bloody murder” then when a sovereign nation was attacked by another nation through the rebels, or did Amanpour happen to be off that da…er three years?

After quickly skipping over all these facts, Amanpour brings us to 1994 when the genocide started. But before that, we are told that Dallaire tried to warn “the international community” that there was a genocide being planned through his infamous fax. But Christ Black a lead counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania already disputed the legitimacy, and credibility of such a fax.

This fax is the single document upon which the claims of a planned genocide rest. It was supposedly sent by General Dallaire to General Baril, another Canadian general at the Dept of Peace Keeping Operations in New York. It sets out the claims of a UN informant named Jean Pierre Turatsinze that the ruling government party planned to exterminate Tutsis, was training civilians for that purpose and that there was a plan to kill Belgian soldiers to provoke the withdrawal of UN forces. This fax has been trumpeted by the ICTR prosecution as the key to the plan to commit genocide. However, all the evidence presented at the Tribunal and elsewhere establishes that, in fact, the fax is a fabrication. (emphasis mine)

On September 14, 1994, he [Dallaire] took part in an important French-language television program in Montréal. Dallaire was just back from Rwanda. When asked a question about a plan to exterminate Tutsis, here’s how he answered.

“The plan was more political. The aim was to eliminate the coalition of moderates….. I think that the excesses that we saw were beyond people’s ability to plan and organize. There was a process to destroy the political elements in the moderate camp. There was a breakdown and hysteria absolutely…. But nobody could have foreseen or planned the magnitude of the destruction we saw.” (Note: people who understand French can listen to these excerpts on the Montreal CIBL community radio web site http://cibl1015.com/node/52742

That is how Dallaire spoke when he just got back. “Nobody could have planned it all”.

Yet, Amanpour and Dallaire now both want us to believe that there was a planned genocide by Hutus towards Tutsis.

The misinformation keeps piling up as Amanpour informs viewers of that fateful event that set all the killings into action. She does mention that the Rwandan president’s plane was shot down, but fails to address why that event was significant aside from the fact that, after it happened, savage Hutus went on a killing rampage to exterminate any and all Tutsis they could find, or any moral and upstanding “moderate Hutu” who took a stand against the killing. Instead, Amanpour states the assassination of the two presidents “was the moment Hutus were waiting for” implying that perhaps the Hutus were responsible for killing the president, so that they would have an excuse to carry out their genocidal plans. Writer Robin Philpot points out the following however,

All information, all research and all investigations, and especially Judge Bruguière’s, now point to Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

After giving Dallaire a forum to answer “tough” questions regarding the horrific events in Rwanda, such as “how did you feel”, she fails to question Dallaire’s allegiance to the RPF and Paul Kagame. In his article Re-writing the History of the Rwandan Genocide, Robin Philpot states this of Dallaire:

In the field, according to Booh-Booh [the Chief of the 1994 United Nations Mission in Rwanda], Dallaire abandoned his military responsibilities to do politics, though that was not his job, and he violated the principle of neutrality by becoming the objective ally of the RPF. Moreover, Dallaire’s “duplicity” was widely known in UN mission circles.

Amanpour fails to question why Dallaire, a UN worker, helped a rebel group that invaded a sovereign and peaceful country, kill millions of people all for the eventual power grab that they now enjoy.

I was starting to wonder whether there were ANY, and I mean any indigenous person who advocated on behalf of their people when Kagame was brought into the picture as the brave indigenous hero and I almost fell off my chair and died. I was not surprised to see Kagame in the documentary, in fact I would have been surprised not to see him. But to see that even though Dallaire failed, Kagame triumphed anyway left me weak. What are you doing to me Amanpour? Are you an accomplice to the whole Dallaire/Kagame propaganda? Quite transparently so! And I can’t wrap my mind around what parallel universe Dallaire screamed bloody murder on/for.

With regard to Christiane Amanpour, I have a short note to bring to the attention of the American people:

This lady knows what happened in Rwanda in 1994. That is her who was reporting from Goma (DRC) in 1996/97 showing a crowd of Rwandan refugees being taken back to Rwanda, but saying that it was by their own decision while shielding RPF soldiers from camera who were forcefully escorting them. She knew she was doing Kagame’s propaganda for some reasons we do not know yet.

Her husband was undersecretary in State Dept. at that time. The point here is not to focus at informing her, rather it is to challenge her fact findings for the attention of the American people. Even though she is a star in international affairs for the American people, for the Rwandan people she’s nothing else than another Kagame’s valet and the American people deserve to know it.

With all this inforomation, at the beginning of her documentary “Scream Bloody Murder” I was curious to see if Amanpour’s views with those thugs in Kigali might have changed with time in case she might have been cheated: 14 yrs is a long time to keep a lie alive! In the end, I was completely disappointed.

Specifically, I was so shocked to see that she deliberately failed to elaborate a little bit about Habyarima’s plane crash on April 6th 1994, a terrorist act that sparkled the about Habyarima’s plane crash on April 6th 1994, a terrorist act that sparkled the Rwandan genocide and is now a hot topic in international media with the recent Rose Kabuye’s arrest in Germany on criminal charges related this plane crash.

Is Christiane Amounpour aware of the level of suffering she is currently imposing to the Rwandan people as a whole by helping coverring up Kagame’s lies? I hope she is not. With her expertise in international affairs, shouldn’t she be calling the American people to join our plea for justice, fairness and an end to the culture of impunity that is widespread in the African Great Lakes region? I am confident that one day she will.

I still can’t believe the worlds apathy when it came to the Rwandan genocide. Yet, we are watching another one unfold in the Congo and the world is still apathetic. Seems like the world thinks Africa is a sacrifice continent…

Dallaire is nothing but a bad liar who weeps to the camera while he’s being paid millions by the Kigali regime for keeping quiet. How could someone who did absolutely nothing receive a Nobel Peace Prize?? It still amazes me to this day. He is not worthy of anything but a lifesentence and his book is full of rubbish and slander. He and the other thousands of murderers will have to one day face teh international community and fess up to their heinous crimes.

Although your cause is good – stopping genocide in Africa your credibility is shot with this article.

Unless you were there or interviewed people that were I suggest you leave your assumptions and half truths at the door.

Unless you have actual proof that Kagame started the genocide by shooting down the plane or that Dallaire was in hoots with the RPF I would suggest you not slander them.

The source you quote obviously got his information from Booh Booh who had a bone to pick with Dallaire and according to Dallaire was no help prior to the genocide. If the reports Booh-Booh sent to the UN are to be believed, he downplayed the issues surrounding the Rwandan ethnic issues. Since Booh Booh abandoned Rwanda and lived in absolute luxery during his time there I find his opinons suspect.

If you want to sound crediable don’t slander and use first hand sources.